A conventional robot for board conveyance that conveys a discoid board such as a semiconductor wafer has been known. The robot has a robot hand that includes a plurality of gripping members such as gripping claws and sandwiches the peripheral border of a board placed on the robot hand between the gripping members to grip the board at a predetermined position.
For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. H10-279068 discloses a board conveying apparatus that includes a robot hand that has a moving guide that is a movable gripping member and a fixed guide that is a fixed gripping member and that presses a board to the wall surface of the fixed guide by using the moving guide to perform a gripping operation.
However, the conventional robot hand has a problem in that the gripping member is easy to be worn away by repeating the pressing. For this reason, the gripping member is highly frequently exchanged and thus it takes a lot of trouble over maintenance.